Assessing Nuclear Plant Capital Costs for the Two Proposed NRG Reactors at the South Texas Project Site

By Arjun Makhijani

“The overall finding of this report is that NRG’s range of $6 billion to $7 billion is obsolete. The best available estimates indicate that capital costs would likely be about a factor of two or more higher, even without taking into account the potential for real cost escalations during construction, delays, and other risks. The risks to CPS, as a municipal utility and to its ratepayers as well as to the taxpayers of San Antonio are great. Due diligence demands that CPS participation in the project should not be pursued until an independent, detailed study with current cost estimates of the plants and alternatives to it are complete and have been publicly disclosed and discussed.”